


Survivor's Guilt

by bluebacchus



Category: Spotless (TV 2015), The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Anal Sex, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Edward Little/Thomas Jopson (past/mentioned/referenced/role-played), Grief/Mourning, M/M, Necrophilia, Necrophilia fantasies, Pseudo-Necrophilia, fellas is it weird to pretend to be your boyfriend's dead unrequited love, referenced self-harm, survivor's guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 06:14:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29870382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebacchus/pseuds/bluebacchus
Summary: Edward Little wrote a book so he wouldn’t have to sail again. His therapist told him it would help him work through his survivor's guilt. The book doesn't help, but Victor does.Or, Victor Clay attends a book launch and finds someone who can give him everything he needs.
Relationships: Edward Little/Victor Clay
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22





	Survivor's Guilt

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to the Spotless crew on twitter! Extensive Victor-related CW tags are at the end.   
> Fill for theterrorbingo: "memoir"
> 
> In essence, Edward wishes he was dead. Victor has the perfect way to help him out.

Edward Little wrote a book so he wouldn’t have to sail again.

“It’s gonna be a hit, Ed,” his agent told him. She started calling him ‘Ed’ two months ago and it would just be awkward now to correct her. No one has ever called him Ed. He’s always been Edward (except to Tom).

He wrote the book and it was the hardest thing he’d ever done, and that was saying something because everything he did to survive was bad enough the first time. Re-living every single trauma that led to them being stranded in the north and poisoned half to death—or all to death, for mostly everyone else—was torture.

Edward wrote it anyways, despite the pain. Maybe he wrote it because of the pain. The thought has crossed his mind a few times, and one night he tried to find release that way. Not from life; no, he survived, and that was his punishment for everything he did wrong. But the pain should have made it bearable. He read about it, across the internet and in academic publications, about sadomasochists and self-flagellating priests. He visited some places he didn’t know existed to be flogged and whipped and cut with a thin-bladed knife that left trails of blood criss-crossing across his skin, looking far too much like lines on the useless map that Tom kept in his sleeping bag to study by torchlight when everyone else was asleep.

His therapist says it’s survivor’s guilt, but Edward knows the truth. He should have died. He deserved to die. He would go back and die a thousand times if it meant someone else (Tom) would live. Tom wouldn’t make the same mistakes Edward made, were he in his position. He was the one that kept them alive for so long, giving them hope when there was none. Tom and his secret map, studying the lines and wondering what went wrong.

It was months too late when Edward was contacted by the printing company to tell him someone had uploaded the aerial images of the changing Arctic landscape from fifty-three years ago before the maps were printed. The land masses were the same, but they were too far from land when their small research vessel scuttled itself on the pack.

He knew who did it as soon as they told him the map was wrong. But it was too late. Everyone was gone.

Except him.

His book launch was the kind of affair that Tom would have loved. It was held at the Royal Geographic Society and set up like some sort of naval gala from the 1840s. Tom would have accepted the solemn nods and handshakes of the guests with a careful grace, making conversation about his grief, yes, but also on his journey towards healing. Edward, meanwhile, sat on the edge of a sofa the whole evening, standing only to shake hands with people he did not want to meet. He used the excuse of his missing toes to sit back down, but his feet felt fine. The whole night passed in a blur, and he knew that if he stood too fast he would faint. Someone would call an ambulance and everyone would pay attention to him, instead of allowing him to fade into the cushions until he was invisible or better yet, until he ceased to exist. 

And that was when he met Victor Clay.

* * *

It wasn’t Victor’s usual party. Usually he’d get some of the lads together, do some coke, and drink until he found someone to get into a fight with, but this was some kind of fancy party that Nelson had been too busy to attend and so had sent Victor in his place. Victor shrugged, figured that this would be good practice for taking over when Nelson and Sonny finally moved to Portugal, and sent his best suit to the dry cleaners.

It still had that muted chemical smell to it when he walked through the doors of the Royal Geographic Society. _It’s a fucking stupid party_ , he thought to himself. Some sort of book launch. He didn’t know why Nelson had been invited. There were copies of the book laid out across a table and, seeing no one and nothing interesting, cracked it open in the middle and read, starting at the paragraph break in the middle of the page. The first word he saw was ‘cannibalism’. Victor snorted, but slunk into the empty dining room to find some quiet so he could keep reading.

The author of the book was sitting in the library, looking like he wanted to die. He probably did; Victor’s seen enough suicidal sons of bitches to know one when he sees one. It was written between the lines of his book, too; the regret, the guilt, the feeling of failure that would never go away. The survivor’s guilt, as his therapist would say. Victor told himself his doc was a quack, but he hasn’t fucked a corpse in two years, which is apparently progress. He still can’t get it up unless the girl looks like his dead wife and lies completely still with a blindfold on, but he pays well and from what he’s heard, the girls don’t mind getting paid a couple hundred bucks for lying flat on their backs and not moving until he’s done and gone. He did it with a bloke once, too, just for variety.

“Trying new things,” his quack had praised him. “How was it?”

Victor had scoffed, mumbled something about not being into guys but his quack saw right through him and asked him if Martin was back in town. (He wasn’t, and he hadn’t been since that night Victor blew him in the back of his van. Homophobic fuck. Or maybe he was just busy. Still, the bastard could send a text once in a while. Or another fucking lingerie set. That was fun, especially because the knickers were Martin’s girlfriend’s.)

Victor sat down next to the author bloke—Little; he had to check the spine of the book to remember—and said, “How often do people ask you if you ate your boyfriend?”

Little regarded him with big, sad cow eyes. “They’re too scared to ask.”

Victor looked around at the stuffy old men sashaying around the building with their flutes of champagne. “That’s just ‘cause they don’t have twitter.”

Little almost smiled at that. “Are you going to ask?”

“No.”

“You’re not curious?”

“Nah.” Victor leaned back, stretched both legs out in front of him. He slung an arm over the back of the couch. His hand brushed against Little’s hair where it curled over his collar. He could see the change in Little’s posture when he felt Victor’s hand brush against his hair. Victor did it again, twisting his wrist just enough for his touch to barely brush against Little’s neck. “Your book gives says more about you than you think.”

Little leaned in closer like Victor’s words were magnetic. “What does it say?”

Victor smiled. Hook, line, and sinker. He leaned in, letting the curve of his lips brush against Little’s ear. “You’re just like me.”

* * *

After that, Edward didn’t have to wait long to find out what Victor meant. It happened once, then it happened again. Afterwards, Edward realized that for the first time since he left Tom’s body in the hull of their crashed ship, he felt free.

“You good, Edward?” Victor says when Edward opens the door. Edward nods. Smiles, even, and steps aside to let the other man inside. He’s already in his sweater; the down expedition jackets are in the bedroom. It’s too hot to wear them inside before they start.

“Drink?” he asks. Victor never drinks before but always takes a neat whisky after; Edward drinks one before but abstains after when the endorphins are swirling around his head and he’s left alone to cry it off. He pours Victor’s drink and carries it over to the sofa, placing it on the end table. They sit on opposite sides of the couch. Victor lounges back like it’s his own place and Edward sits looking straight ahead, both feet flat on the ground. “Can I tell you something?”

Victor knows what’s written in his memoir and not much else. He saw through him anyways, and knows enough to take him apart and leave him raw and open like a weeping wound. Victor nods once, looking at him with eyes that are pale and cold as ice.

“When he died…” Edward clears his throat and reaches for the glass of water he poured for himself. “When he died, and I was alone, I thought…” He trails off again. The shame keeps the words from coming out, and Edward draws his knees up to his chest, folding in on himself and wishing he could make himself so small he would blink out of existence. Some days the shame of his thoughts is louder than the guilt of his actions.

Victor looks at him, unblinking. “You wanted to fuck him,” he says. Hearing his most shameful thought out loud makes Edward flinch.

“I loved him,” he says. It’s not an excuse. Nothing could excuse him for thinking those wicked thoughts. “I never told him.”

“Do you regret not telling him? Or do you regret never having him?”

“Both,” Edward says quietly.

Victor cocks his head to the side. “Why didn’t you have him? There was no one around. You could have waited till he was gone, then fucked him when he was still warm. He’d go to the grave with your spunk inside him. You’d never be apart.”

Edward chokes on a sob. He buries his face in his hands and shudders. Through his tears, he says, “I didn’t deserve it.”

He can’t see Victor’s face, but he can hear the dangerous edge he gets in his voice when he comes up with something truly sick when he says, “Do you think your darling Tom would have fucked your corpse if you died first?”

Edward feels his stomach twist at the thought. It’s disgust, at first, but then he pictures it: Tom, moved by grief over his death, holding his cooling corpse close, kissing his brow, his cheek, his lips. _I love you, Ned,_ Tom says in his mind, _I’m sorry I never told you._ And then Tom is crying, bent over Edward’s body, desperately rubbing his clothed crotch against whatever part of Edward he can reach but it’s not enough, not for their final goodbye. His hands shake as he pulls down Edward’s trousers, freeing his soft cock. Tom nuzzles his unshaven cheek against it, breathing in the scent of him, never mind that they hadn’t had running water in months, then frees himself. He’s too desperate for relief to find anything to ease his way inside Edward, but it doesn’t matter because Edward is dead. He would be so tight for Tom, make him feel so good, even in death. Tom would fuck into him, not bothering to keep his voice down. He’s the only one left, and Edward is his for the taking.

Victor is halfway into his lap when he lifts his head. Hot tears drip down his neck and Victor laps them up. The heat of his mouth makes Edward whimper. Victor bites down on his neck and Edward’s hips jerk, seeking friction that they do not find. “Please,” he whispers, and he can feel Victor’s smile against his bounding pulse.

* * *

Edward Little’s a sick son of a bitch.

Victor knew it as soon as he saw him, but he didn’t think they’d be this well suited to each other. Edward had showed Victor a picture of his precious Tom, and Victor had laughed in his face. They were the spitting image of each other. No wonder Edward had fallen for him so fast. And better yet, only Victor could give Edward exactly what he needed.

Like right now, when he’s telling Victor his darkest, sickest fantasies about fucking Tom’s corpse. Victor could fucking sing. He’d been working up to this, maybe planned on pitching a nice cannibalism role-play or something, but this is fucking amazing. Victor was down to suck him off and let him call him Tom again, even if he didn’t get hard from it, just because it was fun. He liked being Tom, just like he still likes to call up Julie and tell her it’s Michael. (She used to hang up, but now she talks to him. From the sound of it, she got off just as hard as he did last time.)

Edward begs for it, so he pulls him to the bedroom and spreads him out. Edward lets himself be manhandled and rearranged, listless limbs going wherever Victor wants them. He’s still panting, eyes open and tracking Victor’s every move, so Victor crawls over top of him and kisses him.

“Calm down, love,” he says, voice low. “Relax your jaw, there you go.” Edward’s mouth is half-open, just enough for Victor to slip a couple fingers inside. His eyes are next; Victor brushes a fingertip over his eyelids, urging them to close partway. He wants Edward to watch. “Just enough, yeah? Close ‘em just enough so I look like Tom.” Edward whimpers.

“Shhh, darling,” Victor says. He backs off and slips the expedition jacket over his clothes. It’s Tom’s jacket, Edward told him. He wore it when he left the ship and walked to rescue, underneath his own, bigger jacket. It’s perfect for dressing up Victor as his lost love when he offered to suck his dick the first time, and perfect to live out this sordid fantasy that’s keeping Edward from moving on. He examines himself in the full-length mirror. Behind him, he can see Edward’s legs splayed out over the duvet. They aren’t moving. Already, Victor can feel blood start to fill out his cock and he palms himself through his trousers. Next to the mirror is a framed photograph of Tom and Edward. Looking between the photo and the mirror, the only difference he can find is in the eyes. Victor’s eyes have always betrayed him. No matter what role he played, no matter who he pretended to be, his eyes could never imitate the vitality that other people have. In the photo, Tom’s eyes are bright and full of life—ironic, considering he’s the dead one. Edward still isn’t moving. _Good_ , Victor thinks, and lets himself become Tom.

“Ned?” he says from his place at the mirror. He makes the worry evident in his voice. Of course Tom is worried—he had just left Ned for a moment to go and fire yet another flare, and he had been looking so much better! But now he’s back in this cozy little bedroom—far cozier than a ship would probably have, but Victor’s never been on a ship like Edward’s so he creates an imaginary one where the captain’s quarters have a queen-sized bed and a full-length mirror. “Ned?” he asks again. Edward, bless him, does not move. His chest barely rises. Victor could kiss him.

He kneels on the side of the bed and feels for a pulse. He deliberately avoids the pulse points and feels warm, still skin. “No,” he whispers. “No, no, Ned! Don’t leave me alone, Ned, please.” He begs, pleads, calls Edward ‘Ned’ as many times as he can because each time he says it he can see the bulge in Edward’s trousers get a little bit bigger. He cups Edward’s cheek, presses kisses all over his face. Victor would never normally do something as sickeningly sweet, but God, is it ever fun. Edward’s eyes should be burning from being open for so long, but he doesn’t blink; doesn’t even shut them. He must blink when Victor looks away because when he goes back to kiss him, there are tears running down his temples.

He’s almost fully stiff now, and doesn’t bother to pretend that Edward crying has nothing to do with it. _Why not_ , he tells himself, and drapes himself over Edward’s chest to go in for the kill. “You can’t leave me, Ned,” he cries, face buried in Edward’s chest. “I love you. I’ve loved you for so long and I never told you. We were going to survive and I was finally going to tell you. I love you, Ned. I love you!” There are more tears running down Edward’s face when Victor pulls back. He hides his grin in his sleeve, pretending to wipe away nonexistent tears. He dabs up some of the snot dripping down Edward’s face with the sleeve of the jacket. He doesn’t want the guy to choke on his own mucus. They’re going to do this again, he’s sure, and he’s going to keep Edward safe and alive for as long as he can so he can never go without this again.

“If only you had a way to say you loved me back,” Victor says. “But…” he makes a show of looking around. “There’s no one else alive. No one to judge us for our love. Let me be close to you, just once?”

Edward is stock still when Victor unbuttons his trousers and pulls them off Edward’s legs. He ditches the briefs and the socks too, getting an unexpected thrill when he finds the missing toes on Edward’s feet. “Oh, my poor baby,” he coos, kissing the instep of each of Edward’s feet before dropping his legs back down on the mattress. Edward keeps them limp and lets them hit the mattress hard. Victor shoves his own trousers and pants down to his knees and reaches over to grab the bottle of lube he knows is in Edward’s nightstand drawer. (He can’t help but look around when Edward’s in the other room.) Victor rucks up Edward’s shirt and presses a flurry of kisses to his belly. “I’m going to fuck you, baby,” he says. Edward’s cock is hard and red and leaking, but Victor doesn’t touch it. “You’re getting stiff already, Ned. Let me fill you up while you’re still warm.” Victor slicks up his cock and pushes inside. Despite the lack of stretch, Edward doesn’t make a sound. His eyes squeeze shut for a moment, but he’s back to playing dead by the time Victor starts thrusting. Edward’s hot and tight around him, but more importantly he’s unmoving and pale and drooling out the side of his mouth and when Victor lifts his heavy legs up higher to fuck him deeper, Edward clenches around him and it’s exactly how Victor imagines rigor mortis feels when it sets in.

“Fuck, Ned.” It’s good. Victor fucks with his eyes open because the sight does more for him than the feeling, and Edward is a vision. He’s a mess. Victor could do anything to him right now and he’d just lie there, wanting more. God, Edward Little is a fucking disaster and yet here he is, giving Victor everything he’s ever wanted without money, without judgement, without a single word. All it takes is one more _I love you, Ned,_ and Edward is coming all over himself without even being touched. Victor fucks him through it, chasing his own release. “I’m gonna stay inside you forever,” Victor finally murmurs, and comes inside Edward’s tight heat.

Victor brings him a glass of water with a slice of lemon in it.

“So you don’t get scurvy,” he says with a wry smile. Edward is wrapped up in a matching flannel pajama set that makes him look like an overgrown child playing at being a lumberjack. His cold feet are tucked under the duvet.

“Thanks,” he says. “And thanks for—“ he gestures around himself at the bed, the room, the mirror. The framed photo next to it. His eyes linger on it for a moment too long and he colours. “I’m sorry I can’t be—“ Edward cuts himself off again. He takes a sip of his water.

Victor sits on the other side of the bed, swinging his legs up and squashing down the duvet he had just fluffed. “It was good, yeah?”

Edward nods.

“Then we’ll do it again.”

Edward draws his lower lip between his teeth. “You don’t think it’s fucked up?”

Victor snorts. “Nah, it’s pretty fucked up. You’re a fucking sicko, Edward Little, but I happen to like that in a bloke.”

“I like you too,” Edward says quietly. It’s not what Victor said, but he takes it. He’s fond of Edward, it’s true, and he wants to see him again. “Can you stay the night?”

Or maybe he doesn’t want to leave at all, because Victor says, “Yeah,” before he gives it a second thought and Edward tucks his face into the side of Victor’s neck and reaches for his hand. Victor can feel the pulse in Edward’s wrist against his fingers, and he finds he doesn’t mind at all.

**Author's Note:**

> CW for mentions of past necrophilia, fantasies of committing necrophilia, consensual participation in necrophilia roleplay, roleplaying as your boyfriend's dead unrequited love, self-hatred (courtesy of survivor's guilt), mentions of flogging, whipping and knifeplay (all consensual and in a controlled environment), and vaguely referenced cannibalism. 
> 
> Thanks for reading this terrible little piece!


End file.
